Wednesday, July 2, 2003
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Wednesday, July 2, 2003 |
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'Got to find a place to go' Line Creek Baptist, forced to move by highway widening project, finds time is ticking as legal issues entangle selling church land By J. FRANK LYNCH
Long before anyone could have imagined a place like Peachtree City, Line Creek Baptist Church was already here, sitting high atop a hill at the crossroads of what would eventually become state highways 54 and 74. In fact, the Line Creek congregation staked claims to a piece of western Fayette County 90 years before Peachtree City recorded its first resident. Since its founding in 1869, the church has seen more than a lifetime of change come and go past its doorstep, and now the doorstep itself is threatened. Commercial development has enveloped the church property, and its members are made more handicapped by the horrendous traffic that clogs Ga. Highway 54 West between the Ga. Highway 74 intersection and the Coweta County line. The church doesn't exactly stand in the way of state DOT plans to widen Hwy. 54, but if it stayed, the northern edge of the roadway would come within eight feet of the front doors to the fellowship hall. Clearly, the church doesn't have much choice but to move if it wants to survive, said its pastor, Bobby Carpenter. "Where we're at is not real conducive to a residential area, and that's where a church should be located," he said. Down the center of the church sign fronting Hwy. 54, a DOT survey crew has painted a big red slash to show how far the widened roadway will encroach on the property. As if a confirmation from above, the visual aid makes it obvious to Carpenter and the members of the church that it's time to move on. "You can't get into the church at all coming from Coweta County unless you turn into Home Depot," the pastor said. And then, members must maneuver up a rough, gravel driveway cut through the front of what's left of the property. That's a significant inconvenience considering that about 75 percent of Line Creek's nearly 500 members, including Carpenter,live in Coweta. Their outside-Fayette residences played in the church decision to purchase 15 acres on Bob Smith Road off Lower Fayetteville Road for a planned 20,000-square foot complex to include a 450-seat worship center, recreation and fellowship space and classrooms. The church is making payments on the Bob Smith Road land with regular tithes, until a DOT offer of $300,000 for an acre slice fronting Hwy. 54 is closed (the church thinks it's worth more than that). RAM Development, the company that has developed the Wal-Mart and Home Depot tracts, has offered to buy the roughly seven acres that remain. But the church holds four separate titles to the land, and legal questions regarding the wishes of the original landowners, obviously long dead, have delayed any agreements and is forcing the issue into the courts. "It is an old church property, and it's been in the church family here for years," Carpenter explained. "We'd have 2.5 acres donated by one family, another acre for the cemetery, another acre from someone else. "We've had to be careful and let people know we're not dismantling the church, just relocating." And then there is the issue of the cemetery, which the church will continue to own and maintain. As part of its contract offer, RAM has proposed spending thousands of dollars to build retaining walls and preserve the grave sites, which sit at the highest point of the church property. The rest of the land would be cut down to the level of the highway, leaving the cemetery high on a mesa or Indian mound-like hill, Carpenter said. An access road to the cemetery would be built from the rear, near Home Depot. A bank, restaurants or speciality grocer are among the tenants RAM is considering for the church's plot. It will also allow for cutting a cart path under a widened Hwy. 54 to the Wal-Mart area. But before all that can take place, the church must move out. And nobody knows how soon that can happen. A court date hasn't been set for a judge to hear the church's plea to annul some of the conditions set forth in the 130-year-old property deeds. "We don't know exactly the time frame, but we will not be relocated by November," said Carpenter Monday, as mid-afternoon traffic backed up both directions on Hwy. 54. "We will have to meet somewhere." Church leaders are scouting for temporary quarters, such as a school. "If everything works right, Lord willing, we hope to move to the Bob Smith area and be debt-free," Carpenter said. "We could get a loan and start building, but we don't want to do that. Our biggest fear is that we start building and then the economy goes under again or the land purchase falls through." For Carpenter, a longtime Line Creek member and former youth minister who took over leadership in January after the retirement of Pastor Franklin Treadwell, preserving as much of the tradition and history of the congregation is important. "The new location is only about 3.5 miles from where we are now," he said, stressing that the name Line Creek Baptist Church will absolutely remain as the church moves west across the creek that gave the church its name. "That hasn't even been brought up for discussion," he said. But clearly, there is bittersweet sentiment attached to leaving a place, even if the new place will provide so much more opportunity for growth and service, said Carpenter. "We've seen this coming for awhile, and I don't know how we'll do it," he said. "But we'll try to move on without losing contact with where we came from. We want the older people to know we still need them, and that's one of the reasons for the transition: How difficult it is for our senior citizens to get in and out of here on a Sunday morning." "We realize that if we're going to continue to go on as a church, we've got to find a place to go," Carpenter said. "But we don't want to stay here."
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